


Beginning Of One (End Of Two)

by RecallThePet



Series: Dungeons and Daggers [1]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: How Do I Tag, How Do I Tag A D&D Fic, I Wrote This While Listening to Bastille's Music, M/M, Original Fiction, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 15:31:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23237689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RecallThePet/pseuds/RecallThePet
Summary: Veris Khalin was dead.Except, not really.
Relationships: Original D&D Character(s)/Original D&D Character(s), Veris "85" Khalin/13, Zylas Doraith/Ruek Dawncrest
Series: Dungeons and Daggers [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1670731





	Beginning Of One (End Of Two)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [i'll make another road for myself (hollow from the inside out)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18045125) by [astralscrivener](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astralscrivener/pseuds/astralscrivener). 

> Hi there! This is my first ever published fic and I'm publishing it on my phone, so I'm sorry if there's any errors. If you have any questions about these characters please feel free to ask in the comments.
> 
> Constructive criticism is always welcome!
> 
> Now without further ado, please enjoy!

Veris Khalin was dead.

Except, not really. His body was still alive, huddled and shivering in a jail cell. Manacles bit his dark skin and growled when he moved. He still felt hunger, however distantly. He still felt cold, having long since been stripped of his cloak and clothing and given nothing more than ragged pants and what had once presumably been a shirt. He ate the slop we was given, he fell into trance on the cold floors, he listened to prisoners and guards talking quietly, he cried for the life he'd once had. But Veris Khalin was dead.

Prisoners didn't have names. They were assigned numbers the day they were entered, and within a few hours of their booking, were sent to the head mage of the prison to be "marked." A small row of dashes, a scattering of dots, a line of numbers. Markers of the crime, markers of the sentence, and identifying numbers that were their new names. Had Veris Khalin cared, he would have learned to read these markers, come to understand the language of his captors. He barely had the energy to lift his head these days.

Veris Khalin had no energy to spare the day a Half-Orc was thrown into the cell across the hall. He was gaunt, a shade of sick-green that made Veris Khalin think distantly of the plants near his home that his mother had told him were poisonous. Ten dashes, seventeen dots, "1375" decorated his forearm as he clung to the bars of his new home.

They spent three months in silence. Trading blank looks the few times the Half-Orc was dragged out of his cell to work in the yard, until the eighth day of the fourth month since the Half-Orc had been booked when he called a quiet "Heads up," across the hall. Veris Khalin hadn't looked up until something cold and slimy hit the side of his face. He felt a hand come up and pull it off, realizing with a start that said hand was, in fact, connected to his body. The smell of meat hit him harder than any guard in the facility ever had. He belatedly noted that he was the one being spoken to. His neck creaked as his head moved to look at the offending meat-chucker.  
"What?" His vocal cords were dust, his voice more akin to rust flaking off metal than anything that should be coming out of a living being.  
"You're skin over bones man, you gotta eat more," pale green lips stretched into a smile around cracked yellow tusks. A deep, soft voice filtered through the stale air to Veris Khalin's ears. Clawed fingers tapped the cells bars across the way, sending dust dancing into the afternoon light filtering in from a high window between the cells.

"What are you here for?" That same voice reached him again. "Thievery," he puffed out, voice was dust particles between them.

A hum, warmer than the late spring air that filled the complex curled around his arm, up his neck, and into his ears, where it rattled in his empty head and settled across his face, warming it.

"You know you can eat that right? It's not spoiled, I promise," a claw slipped from between the bars and pointed to the meat still in his neighbor's hand and another smile flashed, all yellow tusks and kindess. Veris Khalin, for the first time in months, felt alive.

They never asked each other's names. They never had a reason to. Shortened versions of their numbers were safer, if the guards heard names being spoken the resulting beatings would leave both prisoners unable to speak. Veris Khalin had three dots, four dashes, and "8576" etched into his left arm, "85" became a common thing to hear tossed across the hall with reckless abandon, like the meat that began this fiasco. When loneliness struck, or trances were interrupted by a woman's screams and the smell of burning wood in his head, "13" drifted, trembling and unsure into the night air. Dust no longer fell from his lips when he spoke, but rust clung to his teeth and the roof of his mouth, tainting his words with the tang of iron and regret. His partner woke easily and readily. 

Loneliness, in more recent times, became less of a starving dog growling in the corner of his mind and more of a worm burrowing into his body, settling behind his ribs and squirming in a mockery of his discomfort. When 13 was called off to the yard to work he felt the worm wrap around his ribs and squeeze. It slithered up his lungs and around his heart leaving him itching and curling around it. The worm only seemed to crawl from his organs when the door to their block slammed open. It slipped down his ribs when chains were heard dragging on the cold stone floor, and it settled to sleep when pale green came into view.

———

The twenty-fourth day of the eighth month of 13's incarceration was the same as each month and day proceeding it. Moonlight shone bright into the hall from the high window between the cells, leaving the Half-Orc to believe that it was most likely around two-thirty in the morning. 13 sat up from his bed of rotting hay. His elbows creaked, his shoulders popped, his knees burned as he crawled to the bars that had become so familiar to him. He stole a glance down the long hall to the guard that was slumped against the wall, head hung low and snoring loudly.

He settled against the wall and leaned on the bars carefully. Rust flittered off onto the ground below as he turned his attention to the familiar cell across the hall. He opened his mouth to speak into the night air and get his partner's attention as he had for months.

The air rushed from his lungs like he'd been sucker punched. Ice flooded his veins as he stared across the hall to the man he'd come to know as "85." Glassy eyes stared back, ragged breaths filled the stale air between them. Once dark violet skin was ashen lavender. The man across the hall was pressed fully to the bars, his arm now thin enough to slip entirely between them and into the moonlight that was normally obstructed by the placement of the window.  
The hand in the hall twitched as 13 locked eyes with 85. 85's small frame quaked as weak coughs wracked his body. A pained whimper escaped his rusted throat. Forced his arm through the bars of his cell, jagged edges from decades of wear and tear ripping through his skin. 

It didn't hurt. Rust in his veins was as much a friend as any person was by this point. 

His hand met 85's. His hand was ice cold skin over bones. Even though he was small to begin with, 85 never did seem to eat enough. 85's eyes seemed to stare through him. This wasn't right. Nothing was right. The stale air hung, unmoving. Dust landed on 13's skin and bit. A snake slithered up his spine and dug into his chest. It sank fangs into his heart. It's poison seeped through him, oozed onto the ground from the gouges in his arm. Worry coated the ground between them mingling with his blood.

With his head pressed to the bars, he could see that 85's hair was no longer a shock of bright white, now his hair was now a dingey grey. His once bright seafoam green eye were now dull and distant. They sat in silence until the sun rose.

———

Veris Khalin wasn't dead. But he wasn't alive either.

He came to consciousness to the sound of fire cracking.

In all his time in the complex, he'd never heard of fire being allowed. Any lights were small glowing orb sustained by mages and wizards in training. A prisoner had tried to make fire once, he remembered distantly, it didn't end well. 

His body felt entirely too heavy. His heart pounded in his thin chest. He let his head slip to the side as he began to pant. Everything felt wrong. He felt too hot but his limbs felt like they were encased in ice. His face itched like something was touching it. His stomach rolled with sudden nausea. His eyes snapped open as he flung himself to the side to retch into the grass.

Wait.

Grass?

He clenched is teeth against another wave of nausea that threatened to overwhelm him. Looking up, he was met with a tree no more than a foot in front of him. Dizziness made his world list to the left. His arms gave out from under him.

He barely had the strength to push himself further away from the tree so he didn't break his nose on a root near his head. 

Fire popped behind him. Wind whistled through the trees above him. Footsteps approached from his right. He forced his eyes to open —when had he closed them?— and was met with a large smudge of pale green. A warm voice drifted to him, wrapping up his arm, around his neck, and into his ears, rattling around in his cotton-stuffed head until it dissolved and warmed his whole body. 

He felt himself being moved like a ragdoll. He had an initial urge to fight but quickly resigned himself to being held like a child. Not much he could really do in his current state anyway. 

Something blessedly cool was laid across his forehead as he was propped up against something rough. Probably the tree from before, he noted. He felt something touch his lips and tilt. Ice cold liquid slipped into his mouth.  
"This'll help," there it was, that voice again. A large hand came to cradle the side of his face and tip his head back. He swallowed the water, and chased the container as it was pulled away. The thumb resting on his cheekbone rubbed slightly to calm him as he forced his eyes open. That lovely green smudge was back but this time was backlit with orange.

"Rest, if you can," the smudge spoke with a fondness that warmed the elf more than the fever. He leaned against the hand on his face and slipped back into blissful blankness.

———

Veris Khalin woke strangely. From blackness, to semi-awareness not unlike a normal trance, to wakefulness. It left him feeling heavy, but remarkably better than the last time he remembered waking. He forced himself to sit up despite his still-aching body. 

He noted a small fire to his right, and a cloak he didn't remember getting was thrown over him in lieu of a blanket. 

A groan behind him caught his attention. He turned slowly, hands wrinkling the cloak that was now just over his legs.

His body turned numb, fingers locking in place as he began to register the sight before him. 13 was hunched against a rock by the fire, hands locked over his stomach. Blood seeped through his fingers, staining shirt and trousers. His face, originally fairly pale, was now nearly ghost-white. His teeth gritted and arms shook with the effort of holding the wound. His honey-orange eyes flicked to Veris's.

"Hey," his voice creaked like rusted metal, "you're finally awake."

Veris wasn't aware he was moving until his face nearly hit the dirt in front of 13's hip.  
"What..." Veris trailed off, unsure of what to do, what to say, what to think, even. 

13's hand came off the wound as he reached to Veris. Veris leaned in, creeping forward on his knees until they were flush with 13's leg.  
13's body shook. He reached up to brush errant hairs from Veris's eyes and settled his hand on the side of his face in a solemn mimicry of the comforting gesture from before.

"13... What's.... What's your real name?"

The Half-Orc smiled, all bloody teeth and kindness. His breathing came in sharp gasps. "Ruek Dawncrest," his breathing began to slow. "Who... Who are you?"

"I'm...." He trailed off.  
Veris Khalin was dead. He knew this to be irrefutable fact.

So then, who was he?

His mind raced back to when he was a child, when his father took him out behind their and told him stories under the stars. His favorite story, the one his mother hated, was about a thief named Zylas, stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Another memory surfaced, this time with his mother. He remembered a song she sang when they hung laundry in the midday sun. A song about a kind but lonely wizard named Doraith who entertained orphaned children with magic. He became so loved by the children that when they grew up, and he grew old and could no longer work, they took care of him, and he died knowing that he had a family.

He snapped back to reality.

"I'm... Zylas Doraith. It's nice to finally meet you, Ruek Dawncrest."

"And you, Zylas."

Honey-orange eyes closed.  
The hand on his face fell limp.

Veris Khalin was dead, and Zylas Doraith is born from his ashes.


End file.
